Codes of Finance

Vincent Antonin Lepinay is associate professor in the sociology department at Sciences Po in Paris. He is also head of the Center for Science and Technology Studies at the European University at St. Petersburg. He is the coauthor (with Bruno Latour) of The Science of Passionate Interests.

"The first in-depth anthropological study of how banks invent new financial products... Lepinay spent nearly two years in a huge French bank ... And his study is both highly revealing and slightly farcical."--The Guardian

• Acknowledgments vii Preface Financial Innovation from within the Bank ix Prologue A Day in a Trader's Life 1 Introduction Questioning Finance 6 Part I From Models to Books 23 Chapter 1: Thinking Financially and Exploring the Code 29 Chapter 2: Hedging and Speculating with Portfolios 55 Part II: Topography of a Secret Experiment 87 Chapter 3: The Trading Room as a Market 91 Chapter 4: The Memory of Banking 119 Part III: Porous Banking: Clients and Investors in Search of Accounts 153 Chapter 5: Selling Finance and the Promise of Contingency 157 Chapter 6: The Costs of Price 182 Chapter 7: Reverse Finance 204 Conclusion What Good Are Derivatives? 222 Appendix A: Capital Guarantee Product: The Full Prospectus 233 Notes 235 Bibliography 265 Index 277